Dave Allen: Hampshire On The Road At Middlesex

In the history of T20, Hampshire have played 16 matches away against Middlesex, but away covers no fewer than five grounds with Lord’s, this year’s location, the last of those, where we first played in 2015. The others were Uxbridge, Richmond, Southgate and Merchant Taylor’s School.

We have mostly enjoyed the better of our encounters with Middlesex in the T20, winning 19 to their 11 overall, although we started in 2003 with a defeat at Uxbridge bowled out cheaply by Cook 3-14 and Noffke 3-22. In 2005 we won by six wickets at Richmond (McMillan 65*) but in the following year at Southgate Louw 4-18 and Compton 50* took Middlesex to a nine-wicket victory. Middlesex won a rain-reduced game at the same venue in 2007 (Tremlett 3-12; Keegan 3-14) while the return did not even start.

Shaun Udal contributed 1-11 in four overs and 40* at Richmond in 2008, but it was for Middlesex and not quite enough (Mascarenhas 3-12) as we won by six runs. Middlesex returned to our ground to contest and win the Final that year, while we could only watch. In 2009, we won easily at Uxbridge with 53 & 4-16 by Sean Ervine, and in 2010, we won by six wickets at Uxbridge in the 19^th over (Adams 64). We won almost as easily in 2011 at Uxbridge – Afridi 3-16 – as the Middlesex score of 121-9 was their lowest against Hampshire.

We won one each in 2012 on the way to our second T20 Trophy. as Ervine’s 75* out-did Paul Stirling’s 82* at Richmond. In 2013, again at Richmond, Vince went better with 84, as we won by seven wickets with almost five overs to spare on our way to Finals Day – but no trophy.

Vince, enjoying these opponents, hit 68 at Merchant Taylor’s School in 2014 accompanied by the former Middlesex batsman Owais Shah (49*); then Briggs, 3-20, bowled us to victory. In 2015 on our first visit to Lord’s, Carberry 72 and Shah 64 led our first T20 victory there, but in 2016, Malan hit 93 at Uxbridge which is their highest score against us, leading to victory by 69 runs

In 2017 we won our first three matches then failed to win in six matches (one abandoned) until we went to Lord’s again, and won by six wickets (Rossouw 60). In 2018, we lost by 22 runs collapsing from 89-1 to 143 all out. Last year Morris and Abbott took three wickets each, then Vince (69) led us to a seven-wicket victory.

Dave Allen